


and all's right

by pipistrelle



Category: Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-29 13:18:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3897802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's September, 1932, and Idgie Threadgoode is putting things back where they belong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and all's right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shaeberry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaeberry/gifts).



> for shae, for her birthday.

It was a hot night, and humid. Even bobbed short, Idgie's hair stuck to the back of her neck. Her hands, plunged deep in the pockets of her tattered overalls, were slick with sweat where they weren't gritty with dust and sand. She'd been roaming and rambling all day, over at the River Club, up and down Main Street -- she'd even stopped at the beauty shop, where she'd never set foot before in her life, to tell people about Ruth and Ruth's husband. Telling them _her_ version, the one where Ruth's poor husband had got the life crushed out of him by an armored Brinks truck that rolled over on top of his Model T and flattened him like a pancake. "Just like a pancake!" she'd told Grady, and smacked her hands together, _splat_! -- to show how he'd been flattened. She knew Grady hadn't believed her -- hell, maybe nobody had, but she didn't care. All she cared about was Ruth.

She slipped into the house through the kitchen door, creeping up the stairs and down the hall towards Ruth's room, quiet and wary as a doe at the wood's edge. It was late, past midnight, but Idgie knew she wouldn't be able to get a wink of sleep before morning. Outside Ruth's door she paused, listening for any kind of trouble, but all she heard was the night loud with cicadas and the tired old house creaking and groaning like a living thing as it settled. For the thousandth time, her fingertips worried at the edge of the folded-up paper in the left pocket of her overalls, then she gulped in a breath like a shot of whiskey and turned the handle. It was unlocked. The room inside was just as she remembered it from all those years ago, even down to Ruth, sound asleep in the little bed.

Idgie Threadgoode had never lost her nerve in her life. Why, just this morning she'd nearly had her head cracked open trying to kill a man who weighed three of her and had the meanest eyes she'd ever seen. She hadn't felt even a flicker of fear then. But now --

She wasn't afraid, she told herself. How could she be afraid of Ruth, who'd looked so pale and worn walking up the three big steps to the porch of the Threadgoode house, who'd held her head so high even when she looked about ready to faint from weariness? Momma nearly had fainted at the sight of her, and Poppa had wrung his hands like a worried old maid over her condition. If the two of them had had their way, they'd have fed her till she burst. It had finally taken Idgie, Big George, and Sipsey to rescue her from the Threadgoode hospitality -- and now here she was, fast asleep, and Idgie looked at her and could hardly breathe.

It wasn't fear, it couldn't be. It was something else that filled her up all in a flash, the way the river flooded after a heavy rain, and turned her all to churning wildness. Idgie shut the door to Ruth's room carefully behind her and moved half a step towards the bed. Her hand slipped automatically into her pocket and she felt the shape of the paper there, felt her heart slowing down a little and her throat opening up again. The shades hadn't been drawn all the way over the window and a thin sliver of moonlight had found its way into the room, falling across the curve of Ruth's cheek and one dark lock of hair that clung damply to her skin. This was what Idgie had been avoiding all day by wandering around town spreading the news. This, here, standing at the foot of the bed looking at that face haloed by moonlight and that lock of hair, had seemed much harder than fighting off twenty Frank Bennetts.

It was hard, but it was easy, too. That flash-flood feeling was back again, only this time it wasn't anything like fear. It was like -- like she felt raw and satisfied, all at once. Like she was itching for a fight and like she'd already won. Like the charge and tingle in the air before an allmighty thunderstorm, and at the same time like the rain-washed hush that came after the storm had crashed and thundered all its anger out and moved on towards the coast.

Ruth grumbled and shifted under the covers, letting out a soft little snore that made Idgie grin. Still quiet but not so wary now, she moved to the dresser along the wall opposite the window. There was the small well-thumbed Bible, right where she'd known it would be, carefully set apart from the worldly things -- hairbrushes and ribbons and so on -- that Ruth had hastily unpacked only a few hours before. The reverence in Idgie's touch as she opened it would have shocked her mother to silence. But this Bible, Idgie could have told her, was unlike any other in the world.

It took her some time to find the right place -- the only Bible she'd opened in years was the one that had belonged to Grady Kilgore's daddy, and that one was all hollowed out in the middle with a pack of cards where the Word of the Lord should be -- but eventually she found the gap where one page had been torn out. Out came the square of paper from her pocket, and she unfolded it, smoothing it out on the dresser. It was creased and grimy from too many rereadings, and the edges were tattered, but there was no doubt that it was the missing page. When Idgie placed it between the pristine leaves of Ruth's Bible, its torn edge lined up with the binding like it had never been away.

"There," she said to herself, softly so as not to wake Ruth. It would be all right now. She had done what she was meant to do; she had brought Ruth home, and now they would be able to live the way they should, together. _Whither thou lodgest, I will lodge_. Poppa had said that he would have a talk with her in the morning about their prospects, hers and Ruth's. Whatever they were, it wouldn't matter. This was right, and nothing and no one would take it away.

Behind her Ruth made that soft, silly snoring sound again. Idgie carefully closed the Bible and set it back among the hairbrushes and the ribbons, then turned and slipped out of the room, sure-footed and silent as a wild thing in its natural home.

For the first time in a very long time, Ruth smiled in her sleep.


End file.
